A blog about Marinwood-Lucas Valley and the Marin Housing Element, politics, economics and social policy. The MOST DANGEROUS BLOG in Marinwood-Lucas Valley.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

VIDEO: Bridge Housing "We have given Dixie Schools an estimate of 1.8 students per apartment" (150 students)

On October 27, 2012 Bridge Housing VP, Brad Wilban explains to skeptical residents how many school children he expects in the Dixie school districts.

Here is the transcript:

Brad Wilban (BW): "I think a month from now, when we come back, we're going to tell you exactly what we are going to do."Audience (A): "When you come back, can you tell us about the impact on our schools?"BW: (Surprised puts up his hand in Stop gesture and looks away to address the other side of the room). "We have given Dixie our projections of what we expect the school impacts to be (motions a sweeping gesture) from toddlers to high school.""We have a large universe (round gesture) of our properties will similar demographics and so we know that about 1.8 students per unit on average is generated from this kind of housing"Whole audience: (gasps ) A: "Wow, that's 160 kids, 150 kids!"BW: (Gesture "stop") "So that's infants through high school so next month when we come, we will bring a break down, zero through five, elementary, middle school and high school. Not what we know will happen but what we think will happen based on our experience and that way, you can say 30 kids in high school and there is going to be 20 kids in middle school or what ever it is. So we will come back with that (pointing gesture)"
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Editor's note: We note that 30 kids in high school and 20 kids in middle school will leave 100 kids for the elementary school. We believe, Mr Wilban realizing the controversial nature of school impacts intentionally changed his remarks mid sentence. The following month, he offered an unbelievable estimate of .8 children per household to give the appearance of a minor impact on our schools. This is not a credible estimate and easily can be disproven with actual enrollment statistics from family affordable housing complexes available from San Rafael and neighboring school districts.

I doubt there is a family affordable housing complex in Marin that has .8 children per household anywhere. When the city of Pleasanton, projected 1.2 children per house hold, they had a rude awakening when 3.1 children per household arrived and they had to build new schools. It is highly likely that local taxpayers will be forced to adapt new parcel taxes and bond issues to accommodate the Marinwood Village proposal as it is currently presented.

We can consider senior affordable housing in Marinwood-Lucas Valley but SHOULD NOT ALLOW ANY FAMILY SUBSIDIZED HOUSING that does not have strong financial support for the education of the children who will be coming into our community. This support could come from a commercial project such as the Farm to Table market which will generate millions in sales taxes or it could come from the non profit developers themselves who may provide realistic financial support for our schools.

We hope that Bridge housing will not force their unsustainable plans on our community without providing for it's tenants and the community that will host them.

We are asking our school board and administrators for unbiased student enrollment data from the San Rafael and neighboring school districts from affordable housing complexes owned by Bridge Housing and EAH Housing.

The community has a right to know of the full impacts of "non profit" subsidized housing projects before they are approved.

About SaveMarinwood.org

Our community is what we make it. Marinwood-Lucas Valley is on the eve of a fateful decision by the Marin County Board of Supervisors to designate our community with 71% of all affordable housing in unincorporated Marin. If built to plan it will swell our community by 25% and add 600-1000 school children to the Dixie School District. Since affordable housing developments pay virtually no taxes, the community will have to pay for the $6 million to $10 million annually estimated to educate these children. Our total budget for the Marinwood CSD is $4.2 million dollars. Clearly it will have a severe impact on our community.

We support a fair allocation of affordable housing in our community that is sensitive to land use, is fiscally responsible, healthy for the families and integrates diversity within our community.

Unfortunately, planners, politicians and political insiders made their plans without us.